FOSS – Small Town Techhttps://valmj.wordpress.com
A lot of tech and culture and a little activismFri, 09 Dec 2016 15:20:33 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngFOSS – Small Town Techhttps://valmj.wordpress.com
Quick Hit: A Blog Post about Blog Postshttps://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/quick-hit-a-blog-post-about-blog-posts/
https://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/quick-hit-a-blog-post-about-blog-posts/#respondThu, 21 Mar 2013 19:31:28 +0000http://valmj.wordpress.com/?p=551]]>I have two blog posts that were published on the Wikimedia Blog.

The first is ‘How to create a good first Bug Report‘ and was published this Monday. It gives an overview of what we look for in a bug report, why, and what to expect if you want to file a bug report.

]]>https://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/quick-hit-a-blog-post-about-blog-posts/feed/0valmjOPW Updatehttps://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/opw-update/
https://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/opw-update/#respondTue, 19 Mar 2013 03:28:37 +0000http://valmj.wordpress.com/?p=526]]>Last week I created a diagram that shows links between some Wikipedia and MediaWiki support sites. I focused on sites that users would likely look to for help on errors in the MediaWiki software that runs wikis like Wikipedia. I expected these sites to link to Bugzilla, Wikimedia’s bug tracker, somehow. Starting from a random Wikipedia article, I looked at what sites a user might follow if she was looking to identify or solve a technical issue. In the following diagram, each node is a page and each directional line represents a link from the originating page to the connecting page. Dashed links represent links that are in the sidebar of a page, and from a Wikipedia article, support sites are linked in the sidebar under ‘Interaction’.

When creating the diagram, I didn’t think the Wikipedia: About page would be helpful, so I didn’t even look at it in my initial diagram (Older version seen here).

Wikipedia has any support sites that focus on different topics. “Are You in the Right Place?” has an excellent brake down of what pages address certain topics, e.g. refer to the FAQ for editing help or a content dispute can be solved at dispute resolution. As I mentioned above, I didn’t think Wikipedia’s About Us page would be all that helpful, but I was wrong. It has a dedicated section for Feedback and Questions, which links to many support pages. It also links to Wikipedia: Bug reports and feature requests, which has info on reporting a bug, Bugzilla etiquette, linking bug reports in Wikipedia, and more.

So what does this mean? Well, one thing I’d note is how I didn’t think to look at the WIkipedia: About page. I think most users would look toward the Help page, first. That would likely lead them to ‘Help Desk’, then ‘Are You in the Right Place?’

Another thing to think about is what sort of words or phrases users would search in Wikipedia if they were looking for how to solve a problem. I actually looked at what pages redirect to a specific page. See below:

More general phrases like “bug tracker” and “bug report” lead to the ‘Bug tracking system’ page, and I would say the same holds for pages that redirect to ‘Bugzilla’ and ‘Software_bug.’ However if users search within the Wikipedia namespace, they’ll likely end up at the ‘Bug reports and feature requests page.’

As Juarez sees it, her internship is a win-win for both her and the Foundation. “I think internships like this allow women like me opportunities to grow, gain knowledge, and connect with a community. Organizations benefit by the contributions women provide to the projects themselves and the community.”

Image I uploaded to Wikimedia Commons using the Wikimedia Commons App.

Just a quick post! Mobile QA is testing the Commons Upload app for Android and iOS devices this week. Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository for public domain and freely licensed media. Today I uploaded some photos to Commons using the Android app and the mobile browser. I encourage you to get the Commons App and submit some photos to commons. This will help developers get more information so they can improve the app. Join us in #wikimedia-mobile on Freenode if you have any questions or comments! Here are my contributions so far: User:Valeriej’s Contributions (Ignore my faces – I didn’t upload those using my mobile device).

Happy Testing!

]]>https://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/fish-at-the-audubon-aquarium-of-the-americas/feed/0valmjBug Days and Blog Postshttps://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/bug-days-and-blog-posts/
https://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/bug-days-and-blog-posts/#respondThu, 21 Feb 2013 19:49:26 +0000http://valmj.wordpress.com/?p=197]]>Our first bugday on January 29th over reports that had not been changed in over a year went well. There was a small turnout, but it was fun and a good learning experience. I sent out a summary to wikitech-l. We addressed about 30 of the original 250 reports (summary of bug reports acted on). This included retesting reports to see if they were still valid for newer versions that have been released. If we could not reproduce the issue or needed more information, we left comments to that effect on the reports. Since these are older reports, we planned to close them after 3 weeks of non response. I spent some time yesterday closing some of those reports. A number of the reports were closed before I checked yesterday. And all of the closed reports can be reopened if it is discovered this issue still exists.

As mentioned in the summary sent to wikitech-l, we wanted to have a clearer landing page. For the first bug day, the only source of information for the bug day was the bug management Triage page. I was able to address this with the last bugday, which was last Tuesday (2-19). We focused on open bugs in the Git/Gerrit component. I coordinated with Chad, who lead the recent update of Gerrit, and he established the focus for this bug day would be on upstream reports. I created a page listing the ‘Who,’ ‘What,’ ‘When,’ and ‘Where.’ I liked that we had a dedicated page for this bugday, because we had a number of upstream links, like release notes and the Gerrit bug tracker, that would have cluttered up the triage page. The dedicated page allows us to post more information, and after the bug day we can archive the list of reports that we acted on and associated comments.

During the bugday, we addressed about 25 of 70 reports. We didn’t close as many reports as the first bugday, but we posted status updates and linked to upstream bugs. I spent a lot of time looking for upstream bugs reports that match the problems described in our reports. I’m not very familiar with Gerrit, so I was learning as I triaged. I have not had the opportunity to submit a change, but I am looking for one.

I’m working on a couple of blog posts to submit to the Wikimedia blog. While drafting the posts I created a flowchart that illustrates the life cycle of a bug report. Andre helped me improve it, and I’ll be using it in my post. I welcome feedback or questions regarding the image. You can see the evolution of the image at this page of the original .svg file. There are some rendering bugs with .svg files on commons, however, so the image I’ll be using in the report and the one above is the .png version.

As for my proposal, I’ve talked with the fabulous Liz from Mozilla about their feedback channels. She gave me a lot to think about and look over. Andre also contacted a friend at Ubuntu to learn more about their feedback channels. I’ll be creating a high level diagram of their channels, and also looking at other open source projects that were recently suggested.

I’m thoroughly enjoying the range of work I get to to do, but I think I need to be careful not to get pulled too far off-track. This post has helped center me, though.

As a side note, I just wanted to point more people to Elodieunderglass’ [GIRLS IN SCIENCE] posts. It’s not technology focused but has interesting points.

My first Bug Day is this Tuesday! We will be working on “stale bugs,” specifically bugs that have not had changes for over a year (excluding enhancements). There are 259 bugs , and it’s unfortunate that there are so many bugs that haven’t been addressed, but I wouldn’t say it’s surprising that there are so many open bugs that are so old — actually it’s pretty understandable. Developers can only spend so much time bug fixing before it becomes their job. Also, developers may not be inclined to elicit more information from reporters if their bug description is not immediately clear. That’s why it’s important to triage bugs. In general you can get more relevant information for reporters so they’ll be more inclined and more able to fix bugs. Also, triaging old bugs is important because it allows us to close issues that are not relevant anymore, e.g. bugs on features that don’t exist anymore, and helps revive old issues that still exist but don’t have any attention on them.

I enthusiastically encourage anyone even vaguely interested in participating in open source to participate in this Tuesday’s Bug Day. This will also be my first Bug Day, so we’d be learning together. You don’t need to be on IRC during the whole event, but you will need a Bugzilla account to help. Like the Triage Guide says, you can test opening reports to see if the problem still persists. If there is not enough information to retest, leave a comment asking for the information. Don’t forget to CC yourself on the report, so you can follow up. I will be on the channel during the event (nick: valeriej) so please say hi and ask any questions you may have. Also, please share this with anyone you think would be interested in participating.

Here’s on example of a report I worked on, I tested this issue, “RSS feed isn’t pulling from correct article history”. The initial report was in 2009. I have Outlook, so I tried to replicate Jenny’s set up to see if I got the same results. She didn’t explicitly link to the feed that she subscribed to, so I tried the links that Jure posted in Comment 1. Importing those links into Outlook did not replicate the same issues Jenny posted, so my comment lists what I did. With these steps Jenny could replicate my steps and see if she still has the issue. But, since this report is so old, she may come back and say she doesn’t have this issue anymore or worked around it somehow. It is also likely that she may not answer at all, which is what actually happened. After about 6 weeks of no response, I closed the report as WORKSFORME. Because I don’t know of an actual patch that fixed this problem, I can’t call it FIXED. The report can be REOPENED later if Jenny, or someone else, comes back reporting this same problem.

]]>https://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/first-bug-day/feed/0valmjWikimedia Internship – First Weekhttps://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/wikimedia-internship-first-week/
https://valmj.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/wikimedia-internship-first-week/#commentsTue, 08 Jan 2013 06:26:47 +0000http://valmj.wordpress.com/?p=177]]>I started my OPW internship at Wikimedia on Wednesday January 2nd. I didn’t have any set plans to start, so I started triaging ‘stale’ bugs. First, what is bug triaging? I didn’t know what it was a month ago, and I’m still figuring it out. MediaWiki’s Bug Management page on Triaging says:

Bug triage refers to assuring quality of bug reports in Wikimedia Bugzilla…. The main job of triagers and the Bugsquad is to help users and developers in Bugzilla. Triaging a bug report involves making sure that the bug report

has enough information for developers and makes sense

has not already been reported before (checking for duplicates)

is filed in the correct place (product and component)

has sensible “Severity” and “Priority” fields

is versioned correctly

For me, that means asking bug reporters questions to get the information developers need, testing reports to see if I can confirm them or if they’re still viable in newer versions, and judging the a bug’s priority. Currently I have not had much experience in finding duplicate reports.

I mentioned earlier that I have been going through ‘stale’ reports. Stale reports are bug reports that are were filed over so many months ago. For example I’ve been looking at reports that are 1 year old. I’ve been looking at old reports because Andre, Wikiemedia’s Bug Wrangler and my mentor, is busy triaging new reports. When I was applying, I offered to work on something that “would be nice to have, but [he] doesn’t have the time to do.” And I’m sticking with that philosophy. I work on the old bug reports because very few people are, and the more I can get people to look at them, or even close them, the better.

Besides triaging bug reports I’ve been reading wiki pages. Lots and lots of wiki pages. I knew next to nothing about the extensions MediaWiki has and almost every time I open a bug report, I have to open up a wiki page to learn about something new. i feel like I’m spending too much time reading about extensions or bug histories (or a number of other things), so I don’t get to work on as many bug reports as I would like. I mentioned this to Andre and my other mentor Quim (he’s also the administrator for Wikimedia’s Outreach Program for Women). Andre said that he sometime’s feels that way, too. I’m glad it isn’t just me. Quim’s advice was to have a concrete goal for any tasks that I undertake. Instead of “triage old bugs,” which is unfocused and difficult to call complete, I could traige 1 year old+ bugs of the Drafts extension. I’m working on implementing that advice.

Overall I’m very excited to be participating in this internship. It’s very engaging, and I’m learning so much about Wikimedia’s numerous projects, MediaWiki (especially MediaWiki) and working on an open source projects. My next post will talk about how I will Be Bold.